(The following story by Neco Cockburn appeared on the Toronto Star website on February 18.)
TORONTO — About 5,000 Canadian National Railway Co. employees could go on strike as early as Friday after members of the Canadian Auto Workers union rejected three tentative contract agreements.
“Wage is the real kicker,” CAW president Buzz Hargrove said at a news conference yesterday afternoon.
The two sides will attempt to reconcile their differences in Montreal today during a meeting requested by federal Labour Minister Claudette Bradshaw.
Tentative agreements reached last month by the union and Canada’s largest railway company offered employees pay increases and improved benefits for shift and weekend work.
But Hargrove said yesterday that workers rejected the proposals in ratification votes that were tallied on Monday.
More than half of the workers rejected the agreements, which covered shopcraft employees, clerical workers and intermodal yard employees.
Members “were demanding more money — that is the key issue here,” Hargrove said, adding he wasn’t optimistic that today’s meeting in Montreal will avoid a strike.
An annual 3 per cent pay raise over three years had been agreed upon in the proposal, which was subsequently rejected by 63 per cent of shopcraft workers and 57 per cent of other employees.
Hargrove said he wasn’t surprised with the results of the vote, as workers are also angry over issues such as working conditions and a range of benefits.
Armed with the rejection and a 90 per cent strike mandate from January, the union gave the railway company its strike deadline.
“We’re disappointed because these agreements have been bargained through good-faith bargaining and mutually agreed upon,” CN spokesperson Mark Hallman said yesterday.
Hallman said the company has contingency plans for maintaining rail service in the event of a strike.
“We are talking with the union at the current time. We would like to reach a settlement, but if that proves impossible, we’re prepared to operate and continue forward without them, with management personnel filling the key jobs,” he said.
Hargrove said no negotiations were held yesterday, and warned that CN would face challenges if it tried to function during a strike.
“If they could operate with 5,000 fewer people, one would have to wonder why they weren’t doing that on a regular basis,” Hargrove said.
“We will operate our core businesses and be able to move whatever comes our way,” Hallman added.
“Clearly, you can’t be totally business-as-usual, but we will do our utmost to be business-as-usual.”
The CAW represents about a quarter of the company’s 22,000 employees. Its workers provide customer service, safety inspections, repairs to trains and railcars, and manual labour in areas where shipments are transferred between trains, trucks and boats, said Abe Rosner, a CAW national representative.
The employees take home an average annual salary of about $45,000, he said.
Last year, CN moved about 4.2 million carloads of freight across Canada and through the U.S. Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. The company ships forestry products, autos, intermodal units, grain, fertilizer, petroleum, chemicals, metals and minerals. It had revenues of about $5.9 billion last year.
“The company’s been doing extremely well. The downsizing over the last several years has meant that they are making a lot of money for their shareholders and executives, and going into bargaining our members’ expectations were high,” said Hargrove.
He said other unions with collective agreements wouldn’t be asked to honour picket lines in the event of a strike, but their workers would be asked not to take on any additional tasks.
Passenger-rail service and grain shipments are two areas in which the union will attempt to avoid disruptions, Hargrove said.
“There’s no direct impact on GO Trains,” added GO Transit spokesperson Ed Shea. He said that indirect service disruptions caused by pickets or delayed freight trains on tracks could happen “any time with any labour situation.”
CN and the CAW reached their last three-year labour pact in March, 2001, without a strike or lockout.
After those contracts expired last December, the company and union bargained past a strike deadline to avert a walkout, resulting in the tentative deal on Jan. 23.
The railway is also in contract discussions with six other unions representing 8,500 workers, including police, train and electrical crews and dispatchers. Their contracts also expired at the end of last year.